I’ve invested more hours in the board game Pandemic than I care to admit. First released in 2007, it casts players as a team of medics cooperating to prevent a disease-induced apocalypse; over the years, it’s become one of the board game industry’s best-sellers.

But while Pandemic’s struggle against sickness provided some great game nights, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t perversely intrigued by the biological armageddon the game threatens—a possibility explored in films like Contagion and 28 Days Later. Sometimes Pandemic is most satisfying when the situation is most dire.

Plague Inc.: The Board Game, from UK studio Ndemic Creations, wholeheartedly embraces this love of catastrophe. Based on the company’s strategy video game of the same name, Plague Inc. is essentially the anti-Pandemic: It hands players control of competing diseases and challenges them to wipe out as much of the Earth’s population as they can.

While that might seem like a dark premise, it’s a popular one. The original Plague Inc. video game and follow-up Plague Inc: Evolved have been downloaded more than 85 million times, according to their developer. They’ve also been praised by the Centers for Disease Control as tools for teaching the public about disease transmission. But how well does this success in the digital realm translate to the tabletop?

Evolving a killer disease

Plague Inc.: The Board Game sees you and your opponents start on an even footing, controlling identical, low-powered bacterial strains, each with a foothold in a single city. Over the course of the game, you compete to spread your disease across the world while evolving new genetic traits and devastating entire countries in the process. That takes careful tactical thinking.

Game details

The game’s board is divided into different regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, and South America. As you play, you populate each region with cards representing different countries, and the nations available to infect change as players annihilate some and add others to the board.

Different countries come with varying numbers of cities to infect. You’ll be able to add infection cubes to the board with each passing turn and expand your reach across an ever-widening swathe of the globe. Once all cities in a country have been infected, the player with the most cubes on that country card has the chance to wipe it out, rolling an ominous, blood-spattered “death die” to make the attempt. Should this succeed, the player takes the country card, which counts toward scoring at the end of the game.

Each country thus becomes a battlezone, with multiple players vying for control. You gradually build up your presence in different locations, trying to strike a balance between claiming dominance in individual nations and spreading out across the board to keep your options open for future turns. Even if you don’t end up with the majority of cubes on a country card, it’s worth investing some effort in establishing a presence there, because all players infecting a country receive rewards when it eventually bites the dust.

What rewards? Well, first come DNA points, which allow you to evolve your disease and make it more effective as the game progresses. Symptoms like coughing, hemorrhaging, and organ failure increase the infectiousness and lethality of your strain, letting you place more infection cubes on the board and increasing your chances of destroying countries. Cold and heat resistance allow your disease to thrive in extreme climates, while the waterborne and airborne traits let you use international air and shipping lanes to spread your infection across continents.

Then there are event cards. You draw one whenever a country you’ve infected is eliminated from the game, and each comes with a different and often very powerful one-off effect. “Pandemic alerts” let you block opponents from infecting countries. “Riots” let you increase your hold on nations as they collapse into anarchy. A “nuclear strike” lets you remove a country card from the game and deny points to players who already invested their infection cubes there.

32 Reader Comments

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

Edit: as pointed out below, I was wrong and Pandemic 2 came out first.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

Yep, it was called Pandemic 2. It was released back in 2008. Seems like it predates Plague Inc. then? Wikipedia says that one was released back in 2012. Hmm.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

I love the mobile version of Plague Inc., and play it as a sort of therapy when I feel the idiots around me are getting too unbearable. The gameplay is a bit illogical at times but fun nonetheless.

The game group I join occasionally likes to play Pandemic, but I don't enjoy it as much, since I find collaborative games boring. Besides, I combat pandemics for a living, so in a game I'd rather be the bad guy.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

No Plague Inc is the commercial remake of the free flash game pandemic

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

No Plague Inc is the commercial remake of the free flash game pandemic

Two different studios, so I doubt it. One is UK, tthe other is Canada. Plus. Pandemic 2.5 was apparantly released on iOS in 2012 too, for $0.99.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Plague Inc was absolutely inspired by Pandemic 2, though the mobile game added a lot of its own improvements. The designer of the game has been pretty active on various sites, and made a point of trying to give credit where it was due in the past.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Wow I have completely forgotten about this... but I finally registered an account just to say that F*** MADAGASCAR.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

No Plague Inc is the commercial remake of the free flash game pandemic

I was hoping for a review of the computer game. A board game loses such fun oddities as naming your super virus 'work' so you get news tickers reading 'thousands have died in Madagascar from a sudden outbreak of work.'

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Are you sure you're not thinking about Plague Inc the video game? That's what this game is based on. If there was a flash game like you described called "Pandemic 2", then it was a ripoff of the original Plague Inc.

Actually Plague Inc is the cut-and-paste clone ripoff. The original flash game was Pandemic (of the Madagascar meme) , made by one guy in his spare time.

The guy who "produced" Plague Inc just paid other people to make a clone for him with more polished art, in order to get the iPhone version out before the original developer. I remember reading about the original developer was disappointed about how a clone of his work was a top-selling iPhone game (while his original version wasn't selling as well), yet he didn't even get a mention in the other games as the original.

So it's not surprising that Plague Inc is becoming a brand looking for another cash grab.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Plague Inc was absolutely inspired by Pandemic 2, though the mobile game added a lot of its own improvements. The designer of the game has been pretty active on various sites, and made a point of trying to give credit where it was due in the past.

The version of Plague Inc that I played didn't add anything to the original Pandemic 1&2 format beyond superficial things. It was just a prettier version of the flash game.

The producer of the ripoff (not a designer) only started giving credit after people constantly called him out on it. (If only to avoid taint on his brand for future cashgrabs.)

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Plague Inc was absolutely inspired by Pandemic 2, though the mobile game added a lot of its own improvements. The designer of the game has been pretty active on various sites, and made a point of trying to give credit where it was due in the past.

The version of Plague Inc that I played didn't add anything to the original Pandemic 1&2 format beyond superficial things. It was just a prettier version of the flash game.

The producer of the ripoff (not a designer) only started giving credit after people constantly called him out on it. (If only to avoid taint on his brand for future cashgrabs.)

I may have an unpopular opinion here, but I find that Plague, Inc. improved the playability over Pandemic 2 substantially. Yes, it's a blatant clone, but it was also significantly more well done and in-depth.

I also enjoyed the fact that it allowed me to create a mind-controlling parasite that causes the infected to worship it as a deity while it causes worldwide instability and irreparable harm, and that I could name it Reaganomics.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Plague Inc was absolutely inspired by Pandemic 2, though the mobile game added a lot of its own improvements. The designer of the game has been pretty active on various sites, and made a point of trying to give credit where it was due in the past.

The version of Plague Inc that I played didn't add anything to the original Pandemic 1&2 format beyond superficial things. It was just a prettier version of the flash game.

The producer of the ripoff (not a designer) only started giving credit after people constantly called him out on it. (If only to avoid taint on his brand for future cashgrabs.)

I may have an unpopular opinion here, but I find that Plague, Inc. improved the playability over Pandemic 2 substantially. Yes, it's a blatant clone, but it was also significantly more well done and in-depth.

I also enjoyed the fact that it allowed me to create a mind-controlling parasite that causes the infected to worship it as a deity while it causes worldwide instability and irreparable harm, and that I could name it Reaganomics.

It's not a surprise that five or ten people getting paid to do this for a living can find more time to polish rough edges than one person doing it in their spare time. Especially if the artists don't have to be programmers.

Compare the original Narbacular Drop to its commercial version, Portal. Valve hired the students who created the original to work on Portal, which turned out better than if they had just stole the idea.

The producer of Plague Inc wasn't interested in making a good game, just finding a "good enough" game to generate buzz (considering that he was an marketing/ad executive/business consultant type) to create movie tie-ins (like the "Simian Flu" version that was branded for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) or other soundbyte publicity events, like his talk at the Center for Disease Control. Now he's cashing in on boardgames. (I wonder how many focus groups it went through? Did they pay for this publicity?)

I suppose the only reason they haven't come out with a Plague Inc branded beer is that they can't find a craft brewer who wants "Plague" on their bottle. (Maybe there's none in the UK where Plague Inc is based, but Rogue in Oregon is known for their craven pursuit of publicity with Sriracha beer or beer made with beard hair).

Plague Inc is an odd name, but that "Inc" part is very telling. I doubt Ndemic/James Vaughan will ever release a game that isn't just reinventing the Pandemic theme over and over again.

This sounds extremely similar to Pandemic 2, a Flash game I used to play a lot, like.. 5+ years ago. Design your own disease, make it evolve, hope it wipes out all life on Earth. Like, extremely similar. Wonder how much of Pandemic 2 was stolen, then, or if it's Plague Inc. that's ripping off Pandemic 2 (like, reading the review, the similarities.. are not small).

Panedmic 2 was a fun game. Anybody who ever played it hates Madagascar (you'd wipe out all life on Earth... except on Madagascar. Madagascar was hard to get...).

Plague Inc was absolutely inspired by Pandemic 2, though the mobile game added a lot of its own improvements. The designer of the game has been pretty active on various sites, and made a point of trying to give credit where it was due in the past.

Are you talking about the actual programmer/designer that was paid to remake Plague Inc or are you talking about the marketing PR guy James Vaughan who pulled an Edison on Dark Realm Studios?

It makes sense that the PR guy would want to visit around to leave press releases, but I went looking and didn't find much beyond the typical spin doctor weasel-word soft denials from Ndemic: "The false accusation from Dark Realm Studios was disappointing, and I would have preferred that they replied to my contact attempts before lashing out in public. Happily though, things have calmed down since then. I believe that Dark Realm Studios actually got back to IGN and said that they have "decided to compete via improvements and new games." ( https://modojo.com/article/5094/plague_ ... _25_ripoff )

They believe the creator said it? That comment in the article was repeated in multiple places without any actual link back to Dark Realm. (IGN did have a snapshot of Dark Realm's Twitter complaints though.)

I'm curious where you actually saw "made a point of trying to give credit where it was due in the past".

Why people complain about lack of innovation in games or movies, if the expected outcome is to lose one's investment of time and energy to others with deeper pockets who just tweak instead of create on their own?

In the mobile version, the strategy has seemed to be to be as virulent (highly infectious), but asymptomatic, as possible, so you actually infect 100% of the population. You then sell all your infection skills for DNA points and then basically turn from infectious but benign to deadly.

This way you infect the entire population, but since you don't even make people cough, they don't bother with trying to eradicate you. Then once you've infected everyone, you become deadly and kill everyone before they even knew what hit them.

It's the only strategy I found that works so consistently on the mobile game, and takes all the fun out of it.

I haven't played Plague Inc. (either the board game or the video game). I did play pandemic and pandemic 2 back in the day. They had the best music, it perfectly fit the theme.

One of my friends bought me pandemic contagion a year or two ago as a Christmas present. It looks like this game follows the format pretty closely (cities pop up, players compete to infect them, most cubes on a city gets the most points, and event cards).

I'll probably be skipping this one, due to the mentioned game swings and its similarity to one I have.

As above, if the game is like the original game, it's so illogical as to be silly. The mutations you make affect every single person who is already infected with your disease. So, as mentioned, you just make an asymptomatic highly contagious disease and then retroactively mutate the entire colony to suddenly be lethal. It's kind of silly.

James the designer of Plague Inc. (and Plague Inc: The Board Game) here. Great to see that people are enjoying the game

To clarify what someone said about plague inc / pandemic:

- I made Plague Inc. as a hobby in my spare time. It was the first game I ever made and it took a year. There was no big/professional team - I spent <$5,000 to get a programmer and graphics artist to do the bits I couldn't do myself. Since Plague Inc. launched - I've been lucky enough to be able to quit my job and focus on making games full time

- I was absolutely inspired by Pandemic 2 (released 5 years earlier) and I've clearly stated this from before the game even released. I wanted to make a game that had a similar concept to pandemic but which develops everything a lot further (e.g. the complexity of simulation, the narrative elements). So I decided to make the game I wanted to play! Check some of my reddit AMAs if you want more information.

As above, if the game is like the original game, it's so illogical as to be silly. The mutations you make affect every single person who is already infected with your disease. So, as mentioned, you just make an asymptomatic highly contagious disease and then retroactively mutate the entire colony to suddenly be lethal. It's kind of silly.

It is very abstract and board game like in its logic. Kind of appropriate to make it a board game then. But it would probably be a stretch to call it a sim game.

Players play a role similar to that of god in the "intelligent design" theory of evolution but more limited - they make decisions about how their disease should evolve. It happens in every game with an evolution mechanic.

The retroactive effect of the "evolutionary" changes pointed out by ferzerp is there too.